Tamara
(Lion's Gate Region 1 NTSC DVD)
(2006)
review by Head Cheeze

Poor Tamara. Not only is she the target of every jock, preppy, and popular kid in her class, but she's also the living embodiment of quite possibly every high school geek stereotype ever committed to film. From her mousey frocks and unkempt locks to her crazed/drunken parent and unrequited love of another, Tamara has a serious case of the Carrie White Blues. If only someone showed her a copy of “She's All That”?

Oh well; at least she's got witchcraft to fall back on.

Yeah, you know where this is heading.

Hooray for Tamara (pronounced like camera)! She has had her first story published in the school newspaper, and on the front page, no less! Sadly, said story is an expose on the rampant use of steroids by the jocks in her school. The same jocks that push her into lockers, terrorize her in the hallways, and mock her Milli Vanilli lunchbox (oh, allright, I made that last one up).

Why someone as brutally unpopular as Tamara would write such a thing is beyond me; I guess she's a glutton for punishment. But hey, she just wrote the freakin' thing. Mr. Natolly (Marsden) is the idiot who published it! You'd think that a teacher would have better sense than that, wouldn't you? Maybe he's just sick of the way Tamara looks at him, all moony-eyed and dreamy. After all, Bill's a married man! Then again, it doesn't seem that Bill gets Tamara's signals; that is, until she tries to plant a big wet one on him after class.

Rejection ensues, one of Tamara's enemies sees the whole thing go down, and this becomes the crux of the jock's revenge plan. They lure Tamara to a motel with the promise that her beloved Mr. Natolly will be there waiting for her. However, when she arrives, she finds herself being videotaped in her very sexy underwear, and the butt of a big fat joke. Tamara has a nutty, and, while being “restrained”, gets her head caved in by the edge of a coffee table. The scared jocks drag Tamara off into the woods, bury her in a shallow grave, and vow never to speak of what they did last…err...Friday.

However, Tamara surprises everyone when she shows up for school on Monday, looking smoking hot (it's amazing what a comb will do), and just brimming with spunk, confidence, and a taste for vengeance...with sexy consequences!

Tamara is something of a cross between Carrie and a public access teen soap opera, with lots of beautiful people doing ugly things to one another. It's actually a fairly entertaining film, even if nearly all of what happens here has been done before in at least a dozen other movies, and the film's unabashed cheapness is actually one of its hallmarks. There are a few cringeworthy moments here, as well, with 80's quality special effects still showing that they can kick ass if presented in the right way.

The cast, especially Jenna Dewan as Tamara, does a decent job with a somewhat flimsy script, and, at the very least, give us something nice to look at between death scenes. Speaking of death scenes, there isn't a whole lot of ‘em here, which is a bit of a letdown. I was also a bit disappointed by the fact that the people who most-deserved to die were given somewhat boring deaths, while the somewhat innocent Roger…oh, poor Roger.

The DVD from Lionsgate (it's all one word now!) features a creator commentary and…well…bupkus. There are a couple of trailers for other LGF flicks, but nothing else Tamara-related. I was hoping for a little behind-the-scenes action, some talkity-talk with the lovely Mrs. Dewan (who, in the end, is the real reason to watch this movie), or something, but, alas, we get's what we get's and we like's it.

Tamara doesn't bring anything new to the genre, but it does feature some moments that gorehounds will appreciate, and a starlet that'll have horndogs howling. I guess, in the end, Tamara doesn't sound half-bad, now does it?